ABSTRACT
The most typical feature of the resolution of conflict in Tio society remained perhaps the transfer of persons which always accompanied it. The Tio kingdom, whose formal structure is presented now, had clearly failed to provide for an orderly protection of all, because of the lack of an effective centralization to check feuds and wars, to organize courts in an orderly sequence of importance and to institute a true bureaucracy. More specifically this lack was due to the total absence of any centralized police or army and to the absence of control from a single centre over the sale of weapons and gunpowder. Strife in Tio society was resolved through arbitration by assemblies, functioning now as court now as council, all using a similar procedure, the palaver. The inquest, okuu, was called to quieten conflict. Ordeals were a final peaceful but dramatic way to settle conflict.
